I recently heard the story of Fanny Crosby, the American hymn writer who lived in the nineteenth century. She described a life changing incident that happened to her as a baby:
When about six weeks old I was taken sick and my eyes grew very weak and those who had charge of me poulticed my eyes. Their lack of knowledge and skill destroyed my sight forever. As I grew older, they old me I should never see the faces of my friends, the flowers of the field, the blue of the skies, or the golden beauty of the stars..Soon I learned what other children possessed, but I made up my mind to store away a little jewel in my heart which I called, “Content.”
In fact, Fanny Crosby was only 8 years old when she wrote this song: O what a happy soul am I!Although I cannot see, I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoyThat other people don’t To weep and sigh because I’m blind,I cannot, and I won’t.
This contented worshipper went on to write 8,000 hymns of praise. Those thousands of songs were simply the result of a fire that burned in her heart for Jesus and could not be put out. Someone once asked her, “Fanny, do you wish you had not been blinded?” She replied, in typical style, “Well the good thing about being blind is that the very first face I’ll see will be the face of Jesus.”
